


submerged

by ADreamingSongbird



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dark Fantasy, Experimental Style, M/M, an attempt at horror but i don't think i succeeded so it's probably not that scary, kind of major character death but also not entirely????? it's fine he's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 18:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamingSongbird/pseuds/ADreamingSongbird
Summary: Yuuri can see lights under the water that nobody else understands, and sometimes, the cold moonlight speaks to him. But there's more below the surface than meets the eye, and soon, he finds himself in over his head... in more ways than one.





	submerged

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: ambiguous major character death, suicide mention, imagery of drowning
> 
> This was originally posted on [my tumblr](http://adreamingsongbird.tumblr.com/tagged/rimi's%20halloween%20bash/chrono) as a series of tiny ficlets, but due to request I'm also putting it here on AO3!

Golden lights shimmer far, far away, almost a dream in the distance. Yuuri blinks, rubs his eyes, and squints - is it just the reflection of the lanterns on the docks? It must be… 

…but it isn’t.

Waves lap gently at the shore, calm and mellow in the darkness, as he keeps walking from the market back home. It’s a moonless night, and the sun sank behind the mountains almost an hour ago. This path is familiar as the back of his hand, and he could practically walk it with his eyes closed, but he’s never seen lights on the water before. Never like this.

Music drifts on the breeze, reaching his ears as just the faintest whisper of a melody, and he blinks. It’s… beautiful. Maybe if he keeps walking, he’ll figure out where it’s coming from. Maybe the lights. It’s so beautiful, he just wants to hear it better - it’s lovely and enchanting and inspiring and it fills him with peace like he’s never known…

“Yuuri!”

Mari’s voice jerks him out of his reverie. The lights disappear. The music stops.

“What the hell are you doing?” 

Yuuri stops dead, confused, and gasps as the sudden searing cold reaches to his bones. He’s standing waist-deep in the lake, half frozen already. When did he walk into the water?

“I… I don’t know.”

* * *

“There was no music last night,” Mari says, frowning in the afternoon sun. Now, it all seems so mundane that last night  _must_ have been a dream. How could there possibly have been lights  _under_ the lake? It’s ridiculous. “Are you okay? Did you catch something and come down with a fever?”

“I feel fine,” Yuuri says, glancing toward the water’s edge. The wind catches the bedsheet he’s pinning to the clothesline and billows it out like a white sail, big and bold. “Maybe I fell asleep on my feet. It must have been a dream.”

“Must have been,” Mari agrees. Both of them turn back to the laundry.

The water laps at the shore, constant and present. Below it, a figure with eyes bluer than ice finds Yuuri’s figure, and smiles.

* * *

Something isn’t right. The lights keep coming back but  _nobody_ can see them, and nobody can hear the music, but Yuuri would swear on his life it’s there. Only when he doesn’t look for it, but it’s there.

“This can’t be right,” he mutters, gripping the sleeves of his sweater so tightly his knuckles turn white. “This isn’t real.”

The music is silent. The lights are dark. This can’t be real.

The water swirls near his feet. The moon’s reflection looks almost like a person’s silhouette, twisted and thin and silvery-white. 

And then the moon’s reflection opens his eyes, bluer than sapphire, and smiles a smile with too many teeth. “Not real, Yuuri? And why not?”

* * *

Yuuri cries out in fear, stumbling back away from the water’s edge, and in response the moonlight figure laughs. It rises out of the water and beckons, humming, and taps one finger to thin, pale lips, taking on more and more of a human countenance by the second, and Yuuri trips over the roots of the gnarled trees at the lakeside and falls on his rear.

“Why shouldn’t it be real?” 

The figure advances, now in the form of a too-tall, pale man, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, his blue blue blue eyes. Yuuri’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest, and he scrambles back on all fours.

“Stay–stay back! Don’t touch me!”

The man from the moon laughs again, his eyes flashing dark, dark like the waters from which he rose. “Don’t be so afraid of what you just don’t understand, Yuuri.”

He reaches forward with one finger, and Yuuri scrambles back but stumbles against a tree root again, going sprawling.

“I’ll see you soon,” croons the moonlight monster. His finger caresses Yuuri’s throat, and then–

Yuuri wakes up in his bed in the inn, soaked to the skin. It’s not a cold sweat, contrary to what he first thinks. It’s icy water.

* * *

“Yuuri!” Mari calls, banging on his door. “Get up, we’ve got a new guest who needs a room and Okaa-san and Otou-san are both busy in the kitchen! I’m doing laundry. Go show him around!”

Yuuri gasps, throwing aside his sopping blanket. He’s so cold, so cold, so so cold. “I–I’ll be right there,” he stutters, teeth chattering, and stumbles to his bathroom, needing to soak in the water from the hot springs but knowing there’s no time. 

He strips his wet clothes and leaves them on the floor, pulls on the warmest, fluffiest sweater owns, and tries to get his hair into a semblance of order before he opens the door. He can deal with what happened last night later. It was a bad dream, and he… maybe he sleepwalked and dropped something on his bed. That’s all.

“Am I presentable?” he asks Mari, who hefts the laundry basket on her hip and gives him a cursory once-over.

“Good enough,” she says, so he nods and hurries downstairs, out of the family quarters and to the inn’s receiving room, pasting a practiced smile on his face.

“Good morning, welcome to Yu-topia Akat–”

His voice dies in his throat.

A tall, pale man with pale blue eyes and a sharp smile stands on the other side of the desk, and as Yuuri stands frozen in front of him, his eyes flash black again.

“Hello, Yuuri,” the man from the lake purrs. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”

* * *

“Well?” the man asks, still smiling that cold, sharp smile. “Aren’t you going to offer me a room? I assure you I have the coin, Yuu-ri.”

“I’ve never told you my name,” Yuuri whispers, clutching at the counter to stay upright. This isn’t right. None of this is right. “How do you know my name?”

The man from the lake laughs again, a laugh that contains all the darkness and depths of the icy waters outside. “Oh, Yuuri. I’ve been watching you for a long time. I know plenty of things about you, not just your name.”

“That–that doesn’t seem fair,” Yuuri manages. Where are his parents? His sister? Can someone come save him? He’s not safe here. He’s not. “You know me, but I don’t know you?”

There it is again, that frigid laugh. “You want to know my name, Yuuri?” A cold hand touches his cheek, and he flinches away. The man seems unperturbed. “Cute. Well, you can call me Viktor.”

* * *

“What do you want with me,” Yuuri hisses, stepping back. “Leave me  _alone,_ Viktor, I don’t want anything to do with you!”

“But I want to do things with  _you,”_ Viktor purrs, leaning across the counter and smiling deviously. “You can see the lights, Yuuri. That means you’re special.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I don’t want to be! Get out of here. Leave me alone!”

Viktor raises an eyebrow, impossibly elegant. “You’d rather I see you only as I did last night, Yuu-ri?” And he grows, taller, thinner, skeletal and wavery, like the stretched outline of the moonlight, unsteady like the water he came from. His eyes burn bright blue, and his smile is sharp. He leans down, easily reaching over the counter now, even as Yuuri flattens his back against the wall. “I can come see you just like this, anytime I want.”

“I want you to leave me  _alone,”_ Yuuri repeats, shaky and breathless. Viktor considers him for a moment, long moonlight hair falling down to his flickering knees, and hums. 

“I can’t promise forever,” he says, finally, “but I can buy you some more time. Would that make you happy?”

“I want you  _gone,”_ Yuuri almost begs this time, and Viktor smiles again. But this time it’s almost… sad.

“I can go,” he says, and then he kisses Yuuri’s forehead, and it’s so cold it  _burns it burns it burns_ and Yuuri cries out, falling to his knees and clapping his hands to the mark and–

When his vision clears of tears, the lobby is empty, save for a few drops of cold water, left innocently on the counter.

* * *

The mark of the frozen kiss fades within minutes, but the bone-aching chill lingers for hours that stretch on and on and on, until Yuuri sinks into the hot springs at the end of the day, shivering, and tries to recall the feeling of warmth. Even in the steaming water, he still feels a distant chill.

He doesn’t dream that night.

The lights don’t appear the next day, or the next, or the next. Yuuri almost starts to think it was all just a strange hallucination, that none of it happened and that he just had a frightening dream, except that his boots are still slightly soggy and he still feels cold.

On the third day, the sun’s warmth finally reaches him again.

On the third night, the water in the lake turns to gold, shimmering and bright and beautiful, and a wisp of a song reaches him over the waves.

On the third night, the moonlight on the water shimmers into a familiar shape.

On the third night, Viktor reemerges from the water and smiles that unnerving smile and croons, “Hello, Yuu-ri.”

* * *

“I thought you were going to leave me alone,” Yuuri says, his voice quavery. He stands several feet away from the water’s edge, but he knows this is a dream, this time. He won’t go any closer, but if Viktor hurts him, he’ll just wake up in his home. It’ll be fine. “You said you’d leave me alone.”

“I said I would buy you some more time,” Viktor corrects, and he solidifies into a human man again, like when he came to the inn. His eyes, though, stay that same bright, piercing blue. “I was always going to be back, Yuuri.”

“Why?” Yuuri wraps his arms around himself. “What do you want with me?”

Viktor considers him for a moment. “Most of my people want to drown you.”

Yuuri gasps and despite himself, stumbles back away from the lake. “Wh–what? Why? Who are y-your people?”

“Not every human can see the lights, Yuu-ri.” Viktor is suddenly right in front of him, in the blink of an eye, and he caresses Yuuri’s jaw with icy fingers, leaning down until their noses almost brush. “There’s something  _special_ about you.”

Yuuri swallows hard, fumbling behind himself until his hands catch on the hard, smooth bark of a tree.“And–and what do  _you_ want with me?” 

Viktor smiles, his eyes flashing dark. “There’s more than one way to steal away your breath.”

* * *

“What is going  _on_ with you?” Phichit demands, brows knit in consternation as he curls up on the picnic blanket. He hasn’t even touched his rice, despite Yuuri’s mom’s salmon curry being one of his favorite dishes ever, which means he’s  _seriously concerned._  Yuuri rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Are you sick or something?”

“No, I just…” Yuuri sighs. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Phichit frowns. “Why not?”

Yuuri shrugs moodily, pushing around the rice in his bowl without picking any up. Mari was skeptical, figured he was sick. Phichit will be, too. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

A snort. “Try me, bitch.”

“Fine.” Yuuri sighs again. “Have you ever seen lights under the lake?”

Phichit puts his chopsticks down slowly. “No. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

Behind him, the water laps gently at the shore, and under its surface, Viktor catches Yuuri’s eye and winks. When the wind picks up, it’s cold.

* * *

“Why can nobody else see you?” Yuuri despairs. “I”m not awake right now. I’m asleep. I’m in my own bed and this isn’t real. So why are you still here, bothering me?”

“I’m not here to bother you, Yuuri.” Viktor’s moonlight form shimmers and solidifies into the too-tall, too-pale man of ice and silver. There are cold tears pooling in his too-blue eyes, running down his frozen cheeks, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, you’re here to drown me, whatever, I heard you the first time,” Yuuri laughs, maybe a little hysterically. He hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in over a week, and he’s exhausted and this is too much and he can’t take it. “But why me?”

“I don’t know why the blessing chose you, Yuu-ri. But everyone back home says it only allows in the purest of heart.” Viktor touches his cheek. “Perhaps you merely don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Stop  _touching_ me,” Yuuri hisses, slapping his hand away and shivering. “You’re freezing and this isn’t real so it doesn’t matter, anyway–”

“Oh, Yuuri.” Viktor shakes his head and smiles, indulgent, like he’s speaking to an errant child. “One of these days, you’ll learn that there is no simple thing like  _reality.”_

* * *

This time, when the man with the moonlight hair and the icy smile walks through the inn’s front door, Yuuri is done being afraid.

“Hello again,” Viktor sings, eyes dark as the blackest depths of the lake. He reaches across the counter and takes Yuuri’s hand, lifts it to his lips, and presses a whisper of a kiss to his knuckles. “I’ve missed you, Yuu-ri.”

“I haven’t missed you,” Yuuri retorts, snatching his hand back. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“How much is it for a room for the night?” Viktor fishes out a wallet, smiling too-brightly, as he completely ignores Yuuri’s question. It’s infuriating, the way he only says what he wants, without a care for Yuuri. 

“You’re not allowed to stay here.” Yuuri scowls. 

Viktor’s eyes flash back to blue, like the brightest winter sky. “No? But what if I really, really want to, Yuu-ri?”

Yuuri presses his lips together. “The price,” he finally says, “is that you give me a clear, honest answer for why you won’t let me sleep at night.”

“Now that would be a long story,” Viktor answers. Water drips from the ends of his hair to the floor. “But the short answer is that I’m trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

Viktor’s smile is unnaturally wide. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know.”

* * *

Viktor caresses his cheek, long, long fingers trailing along the underside of his jaw, skimming over the vulnerable skin of his throat. “If you must know, I don’t want you to drown, Yuuri.”

Yuuri swallows hard, throat bobbing against his cold skin. “I don’t believe you.”

* * *

The music is back, and the lights are glimmering in the depths, and oh, it’s  _beautiful._ The moon isn’t shining tonight, and it’s dark, just the music and the lights and the stars somewhere high, high above. Yuuri sighs in bliss and lets the golden melody flow through him, gently washing away all his worries and sorrows. He’s never felt so peaceful, never felt so content…

He’s a little cold, but that’s okay. If he closes his eyes, it’s almost like he’s floating. Floating in a field of gold… surrounded by sunlight and song and happiness and–

The lights vanish. The music stops. He gasps for breath in the sudden, freezing darkness and finds only water, choking and screaming into the waves, but he doesn’t know which way is up and he can’t breathe and there’s an iron band crushing his skull and he can’t breathe and the water is pulling him down down down and he can’t  _breathe_ and something is laughing in his ear, raucous and triumphant and  _he can’t breathe and_ –

Arms encircle his waist and drag him up, up, up, and his head breaks the surface of the water and he greedily gulps in lungfuls of air, coughing and wheezing and spitting out water. The pressure on his head is gone. The water dragging him down has stopped. 

And then he looks around, gasping still, and realizes: Shore is impossibly far away. He’ll never make it. Not in water this cold. How did he get here? He was just on shore, looking at the lights. He was just there!

He’s going to die out here. He’s going to freeze to death if he doesn’t drown first. He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to die.

And then the arms that saved him return, wrapping around him, still freezing but holding him up. “Keep breathing,” Viktor advises, rubbing his back with an icy hand. “Do you believe me now, Yuuri?”

* * *

_Yuuri… Yuuri… Yuuri… Y̴u̵u̸r̸i̵.̴.̷.̶_

_**Y̶̝͖̑̓͝͠u̵̡̗͈͋̂͝u̷̯̅r̴͔̞̮̣͛̀̉̈́i̷͖̬̹̿̄ ̴̲̱̾͌̒**.̷͕͙̼͈͊̾.̶̤̳̆.̵̧̯̲̊̌̎_

“…Yuuri! Yuuri, wake up, come on, come on, stay with me–fuck, fuck, wake up, wake up, open your eyes, god don’t you dare die on me, wake up, wake up!”

Phichit’s voice reaches him like sunlight through a hundred feet of deep, dark water, muffled and distant, but there. He moans softly, weak and cold and drenched, and lifts his head to see the flash of lanterns and torches as people hurry toward him. Something warm is touching him, and he shudders, pressing his cheek into it. Several seconds pass before he realizes it’s Phichit’s hand.

“Oh thank god,” Phichit breathes, looking around anxiously. “He’s alive! Help! I need to get him inside!”

“Cold,” Yuuri rasps, eyes fluttering closed. It’s easier this way. “So cold…”

“I know. I know. It’ll be okay.” Phichit strokes his face, holds him closer, as someone with a lantern reaches them, kneels, and picks up his legs. Phichit grabs his arms and hoists him onto his back, and with some effort, the two of them carry him home. 

* * *

“Why did you do it?” Mari asks, eyes reddened from tears. She hasn’t cried in front of him, but she’s cried, and that’s enough to twist his stomach into knots of guilt. “I didn’t–I had no idea something was so wrong–you never showed any sign–”

“I–I didn’t mean to,” Yuuri stammers, throat clogging up. “I didn’t, I didn’t do it on purpose, Mari, I swear.”

She takes his hand, adjusts the blankets around him, and bows her head to press her forehead to the backs of his fingers, affectionate in a way she rarely is. “Please never do this again, little brother, please. Please talk to me if you ever–if you ever feel like you–you have to–”

“Mari,” Yuuri cuts in, voice breaking just like his heart. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” 

Mari lifts her head to give him a long, slow look, unsure whether to believe him. “Then why were you in the lake?”

Yuuri takes in and lets out a slow breath. “I don’t know.”

* * *

The moonlight stretches and shimmers and dances, and Viktor walks out of the water, beautiful and cold and deadly as a winter storm. The moon is full tonight, and his hair is long, billowing behind him in the light breeze. Yuuri clutches his thick coat more tightly about his shoulders and hesitates.

“You… you saved my life,” he finally says.

“Ah, so you do remember.” Viktor nods, tapping one long finger to his lips. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri manages, ducking his head. “I… what happened? I don’t remember going into the water. I… I don’t…”

Viktor’s eyes gleam unnaturally blue, so light they’re almost white. “You saw my home, and it called to your heart.”

“Your home?” Yuuri bites his lip, hard. “You mean… the lights at the bottom of the lake?”

Viktor smiles in a way that, for the first time, could almost be called  _warm._ He steps forward, leaves the shallows of the lake, and sits down on a root next to Yuuri, pats the wood next to him, and waits until Yuuri sits down, tentative and cold, and finally says, “Yes.”

* * *

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, his voice sickly-sweet like frozen sugar. “I saved your life, and now you’re ignoring me. Why?”

Yuuri looks away. 

Viktor, undeterred, flits around him and touches his chin. “Are you pretending you can’t see me now? Is it because you’re afraid of drowning again?”

He’s right, but Yuuri can’t let him know that. He swallows hard and tightens his grip on the broom, sweeping the snow off the inn’s front steps, and turns his back on the lake. 

“Maybe I’ll move,” he finally says. “I’ll move far away from you, and them, and this stupid cursed awful place.”

Viktor chuckles. “Now, Yuuri, don’t be silly. This lake is  _blessed,_ and by extension, so are you.”

* * *

Viktor stands by the hot springs unnaturally, uncomfortably, looking around with uncertainty for the first time since Yuuri’s met him. Yuuri relaxes into the hot water, meanwhile, feeling safe in a way he doesn’t feel outside, anymore, and closes his eyes for several seconds.

“What,” he finally prods, when Viktor finally dips a hesitant toe into the water. “Are you afraid you’ll melt or something?”

Viktor scoffs. He’s in his human shape now, ate dinner with Yuuri’s family in the common room, as if it’s completely normal for a monster from the bottom of the lake to scarf down katsudon like he’s never eaten before. He’s never seemed more human before. Yuuri doesn’t know that he likes that. “I don’t melt.”

“Then why so scared of a little hot water?”

Viktor’s form flickers, and his eyes go dark. “It’s not the water that I’m afraid of.”

* * *

The music sings and sings and sings, and the lights gleam and beckon, and even in the depths of midwinter suddenly Yuuri feels warm. It’s beautiful, he’s cozy and content, and he could just float away.

But the moonlight shining on the water’s surface blocks out the lights, and there’s a niggling feeling that he’s forgetting something, and–

“Drowning again?” An arm, cold as the north wind, curves around his waist and tugs him against a hard, icy chest. “Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you just wanted me to hold you.”

Yuuri gasps, snapping out of his horrific reverie. He’s standing at the water’s edge, tiny waves kissing the tips of his boots, and Viktor looms behind him as a moonlight shade, otherworldly and menacing and familiar.

The lights haven’t disappeared. The music hasn’t stopped. His chest aches from yearning.

“Viktor,” he whispers, trembling. “Tell me what’s down there. Please.”

Viktor presses the ghost of a kiss to his right ear. “Paradise.”

* * *

The night is dark and stormy and fierce, and the wind howls as the waves lash furiously against the shore. Thick, roiling clouds hide the moon. Yuuri stands on the lakeshore, frozen in place, unable to move, and watches the lights.

They begin to dance under the water, far far away, and the waves respond, shifting into gnarled, twisted shapes, and one of those, taller than all the rest, rises up and starts reaching for Yuuri, reaching for him and whispering  _mine, mine to drown, drown him drown him d̸͖̦̭̱͑̌r̵̥̮̂̎̚o̶̘͌͋͂w̶̘͈͋͝n̶̯̹͔͓̅́̎ ̸̢̬̩̇̽̓͌̉h̵̪̗̥͖͍͂̎̔i̸̺̗͙̯̲͒m̸̝͔̓͑͌_

The clouds part for a bolt of moonlight that turns into a shaft of ice, and the column of dark, menacing water collapses on itself, harmlessly splashing down into the lake and splattering Yuuri’s face as the wind screams and tears into the trees. The moon fades again, and Yuuri sits bolt upright in his bed, heart pounding so hard it hurts.

When he glances outside into the night, the sky is clear and the lake is calm.

* * *

“They really are serious about you,” Viktor muses. His fingers stroke through Yuuri’s hair; this time, Yuuri is too exhausted to pull away, and the cold is almost soothing. “They want to drown you so badly.”

“Why,” Yuuri despairs, closing his eyes. “Why me? What did I do?”

“I told you.” Viktor caresses his scalp. “You can see the lights, and they’re afraid of what that means. It’s always been easier to just get rid of the humans that can.” He pauses, then, as tired fear rolls through Yuuri’s stomach, and hums to himself. “But let me tell you a secret, my Yuuri.”

Yuuri opens his exhausted eyes again and looks up at him. “What secret?”

Viktor leans in close and croons, “It’s because they’re  _afraid_ of you.”

* * *

“Why do you keep protecting me?” Yuuri finally asks, after the third golden song, the third dream, the third calling of the lights. “What do you get out of doing this?”

Viktor considers that for a long moment, carding his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri slowly leans against him, exhausted; Viktor has saved his life often enough that he figures he can stop being so distrustful. It’s still strange, having him at the inn, staying three rooms away, but it’s not all bad, anymore. 

“I get lonely,” he finally says. “And from the beginning, I saw myself in you.”

Yuuri blinks. “What do you mean?”

Viktor hums softly, scrunches his fingers through Yuuri’s hair, and kisses the top of his head. “Many years ago, there was another human in a town by the lake who could see the lights. He was learning magic, you see, and he was blessed by the moon. So they didn’t drown him. They invited him in, took him home, and kept him. But there was no one else like him. Nobody else knew what he missed about living with the humans.”

Yuuri’s breath catches in his throat. “What are you saying?”

This time, when Viktor glances down at him, his face is perfectly normal, if devastatingly handsome, and his smile is the most genuine it’s ever been. 

“You aren’t the first human to have seen the lights, Yuuri,” he says. “Once upon a time, I was human, too.”

* * *

“I don’t know how long I can keep you safe,” Viktor confesses, as Yuuri lies on the lakeshore with his head in his lap. “They’re afraid, Yuuri. If you tell people how to find them–us–someone greedy will find out, and then our home will be destroyed. They want me to drown you.”

Yuuri closes his eyes. “I want to see what it’s like.”

Viktor makes a tiny noise. “What, drowning?!”

“No!” Yuuri sits up and swats his shoulder. “Paradise. I want to see what’s been tormenting me for the past few months.”

Viktor hesitates, caressing his cheek. “Once I take you, I don’t know if you will ever return. And if you do… you will be different.”

“I know.” Yuuri leans into his touch. “But I want to know. What’s down there that’s worth stealing away my breath for?”

“There is more than one way to steal away your breath,” Viktor says softly, just like he did when first they met, weeks (months) (lifetimes) ago. He stands, takes Yuuri’s hand, and guides him a few steps into the water. Yuuri follows, nervous but resolute - he  _has_ to see this through. Something has to change. He has to do this. “Are you ready?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath and looks around. “Yes,” he says, and Viktor’s eyes flash deep, deep black, and then abruptly he pulls him under the surface of the water and kisses him, kisses him until he can’t breathe, and oh, suddenly he’s not icy cold, he’s warm, he’s warm and he’s golden and he’s perfect, and Yuuri is happy, happier than he’s ever been, and Viktor takes him by the hand and guides him down to a glowing, beautiful city, full of life and laughter and joy. 

On the surface, they never do find his body.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway yuuri came back a little while later and he was no longer fully human but his mom was like "vicchan!! i was wondering where you two got off to, come in come in!" and he was like. wait. when did you charm my mom. and then later he went back down to face the rest of the spirits down there with viktor like 'hey maybe dont kill people that's not great' and they did a bunch of stuff but they were fine it's fine


End file.
